Re: [Pen-l] What are these lists for?

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

 Julio Huato wrote:

> Social objectivity is a peculiar type of objectivity to be
> distinguished from the objectivity of physical objects, whose hardness
> also (in a certain sense) vanishes into thin air when you pause and
> think about its deeper structures.  Ask the physicists.  Social
> objectivity can unravel unannounced when people's collective beliefs
> in the permanence of said social structures shift.  And the shifts in
> collective beliefs can be precipitated by tiny, molecular changes,
> where even the choices made by a single individual can pack a big
> punch.  In turn, that doesn't mean that the choices of individuals are
> the only or even the essential causes of these ideological shifts,
> since the shifts are *always* prepared by long, gradual social
> processes, sometimes unnoticed, processes that (again) partly at least
> embody or objectify the designs of people -- e.g. organizers, organic
> intellectuals, even leftists having endless discussions and conducting
> sandbox politics.
>
> Marx wrote:
>
> "Once the inner connection of things has been exposed, the theoretical
> belief in the eternal necessity of the existing conditions collapses,
> even before the collapse happens in practice."
>
> This is a very powerful idea.  I call it the Marxist epiphany, from
> epi (outside) and phaneia (appearance), the inside of reality
> revealing itself outwardly.  Very Hegelian.  We still need to
> distinguish between (1) the collapse of the belief in the eternal
> necessity of the existing conditions and (2) the collapse of the
> actual existing conditions.  Because they are not one and the same
> thing.

This misunderstands what's meant by "the inner connection of things"  
and, relatedly, the implications of this 'inner connection" for  
individual and social development.

Where "things" are "internally related" understanding them requires  
"exposing" their relations.  It then becomes evident that "things"  
aren't fixed.  They aren't "substances" in "external relations"; they  
are "activities" in "internal relations."

As I've more than once pointed out, Engels is elaborating this  
ontological idea in the following:

"When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of  
mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture  
of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations  
and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was,  
but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. We  
see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individual  
parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the  
movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move,  
combine, and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsically  
correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy,  
and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is  
not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly  
coming into being and passing away.
	"But this conception, correctly as it expresses the general character  
of the picture of appearances as a whole, does not suffice to explain  
the details of which this picture is made up, and so long as we do not  
understand these, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture. In  
order to understand these details, we must detach them from their  
natural, special causes, effects, etc. This is, primarily, the task of  
natural science and historical research: branches of science which the  
Greek of classical times, on very good grounds, relegated to a  
subordinate position, because they had first of all to collect  
materials for these sciences to work upon. A certain amount of natural  
and historical material must be collected before there can be any  
critical analysis, comparison, and arrangement in classes, orders, and  
species. The foundations of the exact natural sciences were,  
therefore, first worked out by the Greeks of the Alexandrian period  
[B], and later on, in the Middle Ages, by the Arabs. Real natural  
science dates from the second half of the 15th century, and thence  
onward it had advanced with constantly increasing rapidity. The  
analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the  
different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study  
of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms —  
these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our  
knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But  
this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing  
natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their  
connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in  
motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death,  
not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was  
transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it  
begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last  
century."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm>

It's this idea that underpins Marx's account of "the method of  
political economy" in the Grundrisse.  Thus "abstract labour" is the  
labour, the "activity", of a particular kind of human "individuality",  
the kind expressing the "internal relations" constitutive of capitalism.

"Indifference towards any specific kind of labour presupposes a very  
developed totality of real kinds of labour, of which no single one is  
any longer predominant. As a rule, the most general abstractions arise  
only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where  
one thing appears as common to many, to all. Then it ceases to be  
thinkable in a particular form alone. On the other side, this  
abstraction of labour as such is not merely the mental product of a  
concrete totality of labours. Indifference towards specific labours  
corresponds to a form of society in which individuals can with ease  
transfer from one labour to another, and where the specific kind is a  
matter of chance for them, hence of indifference. Not only the  
category, labour, but labour in reality has here become the means of  
creating wealth in general, and has ceased to be organically linked  
with particular individuals in any specific form. Such a state of  
affairs is at its most developed in the most modern form of existence  
of bourgeois society – in the United States. Here, then, for the first  
time, the point of departure of modern economics, namely the  
abstraction of the category ‘labour’, ‘labour as such’, labour pure  
and simple, becomes true in practice. The simplest abstraction, then,  
which modern economics places at the head of its discussions, and  
which expresses an immeasurably ancient relation valid in all forms of  
society, nevertheless achieves practical truth as an abstraction only  
as a category of the most modern society. One could say that this  
indifference towards particular kinds of labour, which is a historic  
product in the United States, appears e.g. among the Russians as a  
spontaneous inclination. But there is a devil of a difference between  
barbarians who are fit by nature to be used for anything, and  
civilized people who apply themselves to everything. And then in  
practice the Russian indifference to the specific character of labour  
corresponds to being embedded by tradition within a very specific kind  
of labour, from which only external influences can jar them loose."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm>

This passage also points implicitly to the developmental aspect of  
this treatment of "things" as "activities" in "internally related" -  
in this case, the developmental aspect of human "activity" within  
"internal relations" of production.

This "activity" is developing "rationality" elaborated as  
"virtuosity", a development that will "end" in the fully "free  
individuality" of "the fully developed individual".

"Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, to  
replace the detail-worker of to-day, grappled by life-long repetition  
of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere  
fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a  
variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to  
whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many modes  
of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm>

According to Marx, "modern industry", particularly as "most developed  
in the most modern form of existence of bourgeois society - in the  
United States", contributes positively to this development, as is  
indicated by the passage from the Grundrisse and confirmed by the  
following footnote to this passage from Capital.

"A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as  
follows: 'I never could have believed, that I was capable of working  
at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was  
firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press  
printing. ... Once in the midst of this world of adventurers, who  
change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did  
as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left  
it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater,  
plumber, &c. In consequence of thus finding out that I am fit to any  
sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man.' (A. Corbon,  
“De l’enseignement professionnel,” 2ème ed., p. 50.)"

It's the development of "rationality" elaborated as "virtuosity"  
that's the prerequisite for the transformation of capitalism into  
"socialism".  This involves the development of "ideas" because the  
more developed are the intellectual "virtues" the more rational will  
be "ideas".

Applying this to modern social contexts requires, therefore,  
examination of the consistency of these contexts with those required  
for the development of this "virtuosity".

Marx's own understanding of what's required is badly flawed.  It can't  
explain, for instance, the strength of the attachment to the "habit"  
of treating "things" as "substances" in "external relations" as  
opposed to "activities" in "internal relations".

"The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the  
different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study  
of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms —  
these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our  
knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But  
this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing  
natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their  
connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in  
motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death,  
not in their life."

Thus we have Marx's treatment of "the inner connection of things"  
treated as consistent with Minsky's treatment of "mind" as a  
"computer", i.e. as an "emerging property of entities that in and by  
themselves are mindless, when interacting in certain ways" (a  
treatment that also misidentifies "rationality" with formal logic) and  
with Oparin's treatment of "life" as "the emerging property of  
entities that are in and by themselves lifeless (aminoacids, nucleic  
acids), when organized in certain ways".

These are both treatments of "things" as "substances" in "external  
relations".

Moreover, they have no logical space for the defining features of  
"mind" and "life" - self-determination and final causation.  This  
means no logical space for Marx's idea of the "end" of the educational  
"stages in the development of the human mind" as the "fully developed  
individual" with the fully developed "virtuosity" required for fully  
"rational" self-determination of feeling, thinking, willing and acting."

This is another sense in which they are treatments of "things" "in  
their death, not in their life."

We're a long way from the communicative relation Marx's associated  
with the realization of his idea of the"end" of history.

"The most rigid form of the opposition between the Jew and the  
Christian is the religious opposition. How is an opposition resolved?  
By making it impossible. How is religious opposition made impossible?  
By abolishing religion. As soon as Jew and Christian recognize that  
their respective religions are no more than different stages in the  
development of the human mind, different snake skins cast off by  
history, and that man is the snake who sloughed them, the relation of  
Jew and Christian is no longer religious but is only a critical,  
scientific, and human relation. Science, then, constitutes their  
unity. But, contradictions in science are resolved by science itself."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/>

Ted_______________________________________________
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